The California Open Educational Resources Council: From Curation to Adoption

King Library 213

California’s three public higher education systems (University of California, California State University, the California Community College System) enroll nearly 3 million undergraduate students and employ almost 100 thousand faculty. In 2012, the California State Legislature directed the three systems to create an online library of open educational resources to encourage the use of free or affordable textbooks and other materials throughout California’s public higher education system. Composed of faculty representatives from each of the three systems, the California Open Educational Resources Council (CAOERC) was formed and charged in January, 2014, with collecting, peer-reviewing, helping to curate, publicizing, and cultivating the adoption of these open educational resources. As the project chair, my presentation will: summarize our experience curating almost 200 textbooks for 50 cross-segmental courses; report on our current adoption efforts and strategies, including the use of focus groups to better understand the OER adoption process and a pilot project using faculty grants to encourage OER adoption.